


Playing God

by TeamLightningrod



Category: Jurassic Park Series - Michael Crichton, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce makes some dinosaurs, F/M, M/M, Not sure who I want Clint & Jane to end up with, Probably gonna save the real meaty shipping stuff for sequel(s) or one-shots, The Avengers run Jurassic Park, Things Go Wrong, Tony has too much money, crossover AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 21:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4976755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamLightningrod/pseuds/TeamLightningrod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is in deep trouble. Between impatient investors and downright mercenary colleagues, it'll be a struggle to keep his new theme park from being shut down before it even opens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing God

**Author's Note:**

> This fic follows the events and basic character archetypes of the Jurassic Park novels rather than the movies, as it allows me to use Tony as the "villain" without altering continuity too much.  
> I'm going to throw out a general trigger warning as I'm not quite sure what horrible things I'm going to do to these characters. There will be at least one mention of alcohol/substance abuse, and there will of course be some fairly detailed description of violence.  
> This is also my first published work, so be kind to me if I mess up some editing procedure somewhere. Criticism on the work itself is welcome.  
> Sit back and enjoy, folks :)

Phil Coulson’s first day on Isla Nublar was not going as expected.

He was hired as a public relations manager, not as a construction foreman. Yet, as soon as he landed on the island, Stark’s assistant had thrust a helmet into his hands and ordered him into the Park itself to oversee construction on a new pen for a dinosaur with a name he couldn’t pronounce. The workmen were uncooperative, either not understanding his commands or actively choosing to ignore them. When construction was finally completed, it was almost pitch-black in the Park, yet Stark insisted that he push the workers through the night until the “assets” – never “animals”, never given an identity – were safely enclosed in their new pen.

It wasn’t the first time Stark had ordered him onto a job he wasn’t hired to do. Last December, what he thought was a business trip with the company lawyer to meet some Japanese investors turned out to be an all-expenses-paid visit to New York for some Tokyo businesswoman’s parents, with Coulson as their tour guide. It was a pleasant enough trip, but it set a precedent that Coulson was desperate to break free of. Stark basically treated him like another assistant, and whilst he relished the trust his employer placed in him, he was hired because of a very specific and _very_ impressive set of skills, and over the past two months he’d used anything but.

“Sir, are you alright?” The large hand on his shoulder jolted him out of his daze, and he turned to look at the worker sitting next to him. He grimaced and nodded at the man, who had a broad, guileless face pulled into a look of concern. Coulson turned to look at the young man stretched out on the seat before them, being tended to by two other workers. His clothes were torn and soaked through with blood, and Coulson thought he could see flecks of bone poking out of the gash on his thigh. Coulson turned away, faintly disgusted.

The attack had happened so fast that Coulson barely had any time to react. Fatigue had set in, and the workers were getting careless with their handling. Coulson was careless too; his mind had wandered to the comfortable bed waiting for him in staff accommodation, and he was talking to one of the workers about a new superhero movie that they wanted to go see. But then the dinosaur was out of its pen and on top of the kid, and Coulson panicked, frozen in terror. One of the guards from Asset Containment – something Alexander, barely looked older than Coulson’s own son – had shot the animal before it could kill the poor kid outright. Stark was furious, but Coulson had convinced him that they could easily clone a new dinosaur, whilst the bad publicity and loss of funding caused by a worker’s death and the resulting lawsuits and investor dropouts could never be undone.

“What’s our ETA?” Coulson said, raising his voice to be heard over the whirring of the chopper’s rotor blades and the pounding rain. “Five minutes,” came the co-pilot’s response. “Make it two.” Coulson turned back to the workers dealing with injured kid. “You two, keep the pressure up on those wounds. Make sure he’s still breathing and there’s nothing blocking his airways. You’ve done an amazing job, we’re almost at the hospital.”

The “hospital” in question was actually a small medical clinic staffed by a visiting physician from Chicago, a well-trained and intelligent but uncertified local, and an old midwife. Doctor Bobbi Carter looked out of the window of her office at the incessant rain that had plagued her residency at the clinic. As the helicopter came into view, she started and raced out the door.

“Manuel!” she shouted as she ran to the exit, throwing it open. Her assistant soon appeared at her side, crossing himself as they stared in disbelief at the aircraft that hovered above the beach before them.

“They can’t be flying in weather like this,” Manuel said, squinting at the rapidly approaching helicopter. “What the hell are they doing?”

They watched the chopper swing back over the dock, back out over the bay, and then towards the forest. “They’re trying to find a place to land,” Bobbi said, and the helicopter lowered down onto the sand.

Coulson braced himself for landing, wincing as the impact jolted the kid and roused him into semi-consciousness. He slid the door open for the crewmen to carry the kid inside while he slid on his raincoat, and heard them shout for a doctor in Spanish. He jumped out after them, waiting for the third worker to follow before he closed the door. Together, they trotted the few steps to the clinic. The injured worker was already inside, being hoisted onto a stretcher by the two workmen. The doctor and her assistant were waiting for Coulson in front of the reception desk. Coulson stepped forward to meet them, nodding to the third worker to help the other two with the injured man. The assistant looked up at the young doctor, who nodded, and he went to prepare the kid for surgery.

“You’re the doctor here?” Coulson said, looking Bobbi up and down disdainfully. Despite her profession, she dressed in a bright tank top and cut-off denim shorts, with a soiled lab-coat slung over her shoulder and a rusted stethoscope hanging from her neck.

“Dr Carter,” she said, shaking his hand. They followed the workmen as they wheeled the kid down the corridor.

“Phil Coulson.” Bobbi looked up at Coulson, observing him properly for the first time. He was taller than her, but not by much. His suit pants and dress shoes were stained with mud, and his bright yellow slicker was left unbuttoned and with the hood pulled down. The grey shirt beneath it was soaked through.

“You should’ve taken this man to San José,” she said, flicking a strand of dark hair behind her ears as they entered the operating theatre. The workmen had already loaded the kid onto the table and retreated to a respectful distance, allowing Manuel to begin preparing the theatre for surgery.

“We couldn’t get over the mountains, not in this weather.” Coulson ran a hand through his rain-slicked hair, eyes darting back and forth nervously.

“What happened to him?” She snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and pulled her lab-coat over her shoulders, moving over to observe the injured man. She lifted the blood-soaked shirt from around the wound, and Coulson gagged as they saw the gash on his shoulder. There was another running almost the full length of his thigh.

Coulson looked up as she asked the question, naked panic in his eyes, but he was spared further questioning as Dr Carter went to examine the kid. Coulson sunk into a plastic chair in the corner. “Construction accident,” he settled on, staring into his hands as he massaged his temples. He was satisfied with the half-truth he had settled on, but he was certain that somehow she would find out what really happened to the workman. And if she did, everyone involved in Tony Stark’s little project was going to be in a whole world of trouble.

“Construction accident?” Bobbi appeared at his side, looking down at him. He started, and rose to his feet. He looked unsteady, pale.

“Yeah. He slipped, one of the backhoes ran over him.”

Bobbi was immediately suspicious. She turned away from him, and he sank back down into his seat, eyes darting around the room. Manuel had set up an intravenous drip, and her equipment was neatly arranged on the stand next to the table. The kid was twitching feebly, unconscious. Bobbi thought that, barring some great miracle, he would surely die. She bent low to inspect the wounds properly. Manuel had peeled the kid’s clothes off, and she could see the full extent of his injuries. The laceration on his shoulder ran down to his torso, stopping roughly over the solar plexus. She could see the dislocated shoulder at the centre of the wound, pale flecks of bone floating amongst the pooling blood. On his leg, a second wound had torn through the quadriceps. Bobbi could see the pulse of the femoral artery. The flesh was ragged around the edge of both wounds.

“Tell me again, what happened?” she said without looking up.

“I, uh, didn’t actually see it,” Coulson said. “They say it dragged him.”

“Strange,” she said. “It almost looks like he was mauled.” Animal attacks had a characteristic look about them that was instantly recognisable to anyone that had treated one. Bobbi recalled an incident she had seen years before, in Chicago, when a circus attendant was set upon by a mistreated tiger. The shredded edge of the wounds in that incident, reminiscent of torn paper, were nearly identical to what she was observing now.

“No, no, trust me. It was a construction accident.”

Bobbi looked up, and again noticed how tense Coulson was. He licked his lips as he spoke, and he stumbled over his words. He didn’t look like the type to be supervising a construction job. He looked like a desk jockey, hopelessly out of his depth.

Manuel broke her out of her thoughts. “Do you want lavage?”

“Yes, after you block him, please.” She probed the wound on his shoulder with her fingertips, gently shifting the torn flesh to see deeper into the wound. She was surprised to find that it was free of soil contamination. If a construction vehicle had crushed him, there would be soil and other particles forced deep into the wound. Here there was only a kind of slimy foam. And there was no crushing component – in almost all mechanical injuries, there was some element of crushing. But there were only deep lacerations which had ripped the man almost limb from limb. “How long ago did this happen?” she said.

“About an hour?” Coulson was agitated by her constant probing. This doctor was obviously very good, and very bright – bad news for Coulson. She was clearly suspicious of him, and she didn’t buy his story for one second. He was running out of options, and he knew that Stark would want the kid’s death – because he would almost certainly die, Coulson knew, and he was already wondering how to spin it to his parents, to get out of a potentially catastrophic lawsuit – to be kept as anonymous as possible.

Bobbi turned back to the kid. It really did look like a maul, and she was certain Coulson wasn’t telling the full story. But the majority of his body was unharmed, which didn’t line up with most animal attacks she had seen. Usually, if an animal was attacking, they really went to town on the victim, cutting the throat, the arms, the hands – Bobbi lifted the kid’s good arm up, turning it to look at his wrist. There were small cuts and lacerations running down the length of his forearm, and on his wrist there was a semicircular ring of punctures surrounded by a deep purple bruise. Defensive wounds. “Wait outside,” she said to Coulson.

Coulson stood, alarmed. “Why?” he squawked, taking a step forward. The assistant soon appeared at his side, taking his upper arm in a firm grip.

“Do you want us to help or not?” Manuel said, and pushed him out the door. Coulson found himself in the spacious waiting room, standing with the workmen. They looked at him, expressions unreadable, but said nothing. His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it. It was probably Stark calling to check up, or else his assistant doing it for him. Either that or it was Fury calling to scold him, which was the last thing he needed right now.

Manuel stood by the body, frozen with indecision. “Do you want me to keep washing?” he said hesitantly.

Bobbi nodded, reaching for her camera. It was a simple little point-and-click unit, but it would do the job. She took extensive photo documentation of the kid’s injuries, noting small puncture wounds on his good shoulder that looked like bite marks. Then the kid groaned, and both she and Manuel jumped. She set the camera aside and bent in close, shifting his head so his airways were more open.

“Raptor,” he whispered, his words obscured by his swollen lips and tongue. “Lo sa raptor.”

Manuel froze, horrified. He took an involuntary step back. Bobbi turned sharply to look at him. “What does it mean?”

“I do not know,” Manuel said, shaking his head. “It’s not Spanish.”

“Alright,” Bobbi said. It sure sounded like Spanish to her. “Please continue to wash him, then.”

He shook his head no. “Bad smell,” he said, crossing himself.

Bobbi sighed, running her finger through the foam that was pushed deep into the wound. As she rubbed it between her fingers, she thought it seemed almost like saliva.

The kid stirred, tossing feebly. “Raptor,” he whispered.

“It bit him,” Manuel gasped, taking another step back.

“What did?”

“The raptor.”

“What’s a raptor?” Bobbi was getting frustrated.

“It means hupia.”

She looked up at him, a frown creasing her forehead. She had heard mention of the hupia before, in the village. It was said that they were vampires or ghosts that kidnapped children in the night. According to the legend, it had once lived nearby but now inhabited offshore islands.

Manuel had edged closer to the door, his head bowed. Bobbi turned to order him back to work, but the kid sat bolt upright, howling in pain. Manuel backed up against the door, and Bobbi sprang forward to hold him down. He struggled against her, and then turned towards Manuel and vomited a heavy stream of foamy blood.

Coulson paced back and forth in the waiting room. Stark’s assistant had called again, and Coulson answered. She had sounded agitated, but assured him that he would not be reprimanded. Coulson was relieved, but now that she had hung up, he was more nervous than ever as he waited in silence for the doctor to finish her treatment. One of the workmen tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around. He could hear muffled shouting coming from within the operating theatre, and there were odd thumping sounds. He strode towards the door and flung it open.

“What the hell’s going on?” he shouted, but neither of them paid him any attention. The doctor was kneeling next to the kid, who was on the floor. There was a layer of blood coating the floor that looked almost painted on, and it covered the doctor and the kid too. The assistant, Manuel, was standing in the corner, eyes closed, muttering to himself. Coulson immediately backed out of the room, his hand to his mouth.

The kid was flailing around, smashing his injured arm against the table. Bobbi was trying to hold him steady, but she knew it was a lost cause. She reached for a stick to put in his mouth, but as she did he became instantly limp, and she knew he was a lost cause. She bent to perform mouth-to-mouth, but Manuel rushed forward and held her back. “Manuel, for God’s sake!” she huffed, trying to throw him off.

“No, doctor! No. The hupia will cross over.” He stared at her. “You do not understand.” She shrugged free of his grip and grabbed the boy, but she knew it didn’t matter. His skin felt cold beneath her fingers, and there was no pulse. He was dead. Manuel called for the men, who came in and carried the body away. Coulson followed them, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“I’m sure you did your best,” he said uneasily, and Bobbi knew that he had been sick. “Thank you.”

Bobbi nodded, and watched the men walk back out into the rain. They lifted the corpse back up into the helicopter with them, and it immediately departed, being swallowed up by the darkness of the night sky. Manuel appeared by her side a look of sheer relief on his face.

Coulson sat facing the kid’s dead body, looking down at his feet. They had covered it with a spare raincoat, but his feet were still poking out the end, and he could see the lower end of the deep gash that ran down his thigh. Coulson turned the doctor’s camera over in his hands. He had picked it up on a whim when he had entered the theatre, one last desperate attempt to save face. He had seen the pictures she had taken of the man’s wounds. Without a second thought, he hurled the camera out of the helicopter, watching it plummet into the cold, steely waters below.

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is pretty much a retelling of the first chapter of Jurassic Park in the context of the characters of this work, with a bit more focus on Coulson (rather than the doctor, who won't be appearing again). The other chapters should suitably diverge from the source material, however.  
> This chapter exists more to set the scene than to add anything substantial to the main plot, and could very easily be scrapped and the events shown be revealed via character dialogue. However, I really liked what I had going here when I drafted it up and decided to keep it. Next chapter will be a more obvious lead-in to the main plot, as it facilitates the arrival of Clint, Sam & Peter on Isla Nublar.


End file.
